Technicians and U.S federal marshals served warrants at data centers in Weehawken, New Jersey, and Manassas, Virginia, on Wednesday, taking aim at servers that send commands to zombies that were zapped into the Bamital botnet. They seized control of one server at the New Jersey location, and persuaded the Virginia data center to contact its parent company in Holland to take down another, according to Retuers.

Richard Boscovich, assistant general counsel with Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit, told the Reuters news agency that they had a high degree of confidence that the operation has brought down the whole crime operation.

The problem did not end there for infected machines however, as the Bamital botnet was used to redirect web searches as part of an advertisements scam. That meant that infected machines - estimated between 300,000 and 1,000,000 - could no longer use web services.

To alert those users of their PC's infection, they will now be redirected by different servers to information explaining their situation, and how to fix it.

"You have reached this website because your computer is very likely to be infected by malware that redirects the results of your search queries. You will receive this notification until you remove the malware from your computer," a message on the redirected page reads.

This is the sixth time that Microsoft has used the legal system to take down botnets since 2010.

Originally posted by megadunderhead: and if microsoft did there job and checked there code they wouldnt have this problem to begin with

Not exactly accurate. Malware isn't mostly delivered through Windows bugs at all, it is delivered through web browsers and so on. There's not a whole lot you can do about that, if you are Microsoft, as they have designed the operating system to be open to third party code entirely unverified (well, device drivers in 64-bit Windows and some other examples are a different story, for a good reason). Combine that with the fact that Windows is the consumer OS of choice for PCs and you have also then got the investment in developing malware for it.

Originally posted by megadunderhead: and if microsoft did there job and checked there code they wouldnt have this problem to begin with

All code has holes no matter who writes it or how much fanboys defend it. The problem with your statement is that Windows is just as secure as the other OSes and is updated regularly. The malware of today usually comes in through an insecure 3rd pary add on like Java or Flash. Most people ignore the update notifications and I have tracked most Malware infections I have fixed over the past couple years to a Java exploit that allowed in some sort of Malware program that opened the door for more trojans and viruses to get in.

Microsoft seems committed to doing everything they can to track these malware criminals down and for that I commend them and I can honestly say if you practice safe browsing habits and kee your computer maintained and up to date with patches for both the OS and 3rd party software you will remain infection free. I guess that is why I have not had an infection on any of my PCs since Windows 98 where I learned my lesson.

Forget accusing the OS creators like Microsoft and so forth that's like the dog biting his tail. Force these companies to offer free cures for these infections. No more charging for these services. Make them stop creating software just to find license cracks also.